Editorial: A city government circus

Durham government has lots of problems, many of which are concentrated in City Hall, which this past week hosted two political fiascos. First, City Manager Marcia Conner has come under fire for several mismanagement issues and went before the City Council to fight for her job. Second, a candidate for police chief has decided against taking the position, only the latest in a string of debacles in the police chief search that has embarrassed the city and exasperated its citizens.

Conner has been criticized for mishandling city contracts. A recent audit of over a hundred random contracts found that none of them had gone through the proper review procedure. Additionally, a contract worth about $30,000 to reinvigorate portions of Durham went to the Marshall Group without Conner advertising the contract or opening it up for bids. Worse than misallocating the contract, Conner also lied about the situation and then later admitted she lied.

Additionally, Conner has been tied to failures in the search for a new police chief. Although Conner may not have made mistakes during this process, the fact that the search is in her hands reflects poorly on her.

However, Conner's job appears to be safe, since the City Council voted 6-1 last week to keep her, albeit with reduced pay as a punitive measure. This decision is acceptable, since it seems like Conner often gets blamed for things that aren't entirely her fault and that she may not be as poor of a manager as she seems. Overall, the City Council has handled this situation admirably, with the judicious application of punitive measures and letting Conner keep her job.

The latest chapter in the police chief debacle is that Douglas Scott, who was set to become the new police chief, resigned, citing both the uncertain atmosphere in City Hall and Durham's lack of health coverage as reason for why he decided against coming to the city. Scott was the candidate selected in the second search for a chief after the first search failed to turn up any viable candidates.

Now the city wants to make Steve Chalmers, the interim police chief, the permanent chief. Even though Chalmers had been passed over in the previous two searches, it seems like at this point it is more important to have a chief than to go through the arduous process of a third search, which would also have no guarantee of finding as viable a candidate as Chalmers.

Overall, the two most important priorities for Durham should remain development and fighting crime. Fortunately, recent progress on the American Tobacco warehouse is encouraging and shows that the scandal swirling around Conner has not had that much negative impact on the city's development prospects. And, in order to fight crime effectively, the city needs a full time police chief, so it should appoint Chalmers to the position as soon as possible.

Hopefully, City Hall will clean up its act in the future and local Durham politics will stop being a circus and start doing its job.